“On October 15th, bloggers around the web will unite to put a single important issue on everyone’s mind - the environment. Every blogger will post about the environment in their own way and relating to their own topic. Our aim is to get everyone talking towards a better future.”

A few months back, I attended a Greener Homes and Gardens show. As I walked past all the vendors pitching solar heating systems, hybrid vehicles, Energy Star appliances, I became discouraged. I can’t afford any of this stuff, I thought. How the hell am I supposed to go green on my budget?

Baby steps. I had to stop and remind myself. Baby steps. We do the things we can do, and work toward the day when we can do the things we can’t yet do. At this moment, for us frugality comes first. But that doesn’t mean we have to forgo being green. Not in the least. In fact, it’s amazing how often being frugal and being green go hand in hand.

Here, for Blog Action Day, are eight ways we go green in the kitchen and save a little money in the process.

1. Ignore the packaging and shop bulk

Buying in bulk is my favorite kitchen tip because it hits the trifecta of green, frugal, and healthy. You can’t get much better than that. Here are just a few of the items we get in bulk:

• Beans. Not only are they cheaper than canned, but home-cooked beans just taste better. Plus, if you cook a big enough batch you can do double-duty. Chopper did this the other night: used half the home-cooked black beans in a chili, then refried the other half for taco fixings.
• Granola. When the granola in the bulk section at New Seasons goes on sale, I’m all over it. (The blueberry and flax mix especially rocks my world.) Bonus health benefit: You’re not going to find high fructose corn syrup in bulk organic granola.
• Spices. If you can buy two ounces of bulk nutmeg for $3.69, why buy a jar of the same amount for $6.50? Bonus tip #1: Check thrift stores for old spice jars if you’re in need of more containers. The Goodwill near our house has them all the time, dirt cheap. Bonus tip #2: Last time I bought bulk spices, a fellow shopper was doing the same, only he’d brought a plastic bag from home, recycled from his previous trip. Now, why didn’t I think of that?

2. Seek out additional recycling options

Portland Metro’s recycling program is pretty good, but they’ve got a few gaps in their service. At curbside recycling, they only take plastic containers with necks, so yogurt containers, sour cream or tofu tubs, plastic take-out containers, trays from cookie packages – that all ends up in the trash. One solution is to eliminate as many non-recyclable packages from your shopping trip as you can, but if you’re still left with a few stragglers, then solution number two is to find a recycling depot that will take these items. Here in Portland, it’s Far West Fibers, a privately-owned recycling operation that takes everything from shrink wrap to scrap metal, CD cases, carpet pads, planting trays, and even old sneakers. In the plastic tub and tray department, if the recycle label is #1-7, they take it. I’m so relieved I don’t to invent craft projects for all those old tofu tubs!

3. Buy the whole bird

I’m a fan of Michael Pollan’s advice: “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.” There’s no scolding. No telling people they’re evil if they eat meat or buy a banana trucked in from Belize. Just a simple reminder that we’d all be better off if we didn’t stuff our faces with burgers, tater-tots, and Twinkies quite so much. With that in mind, this one’s for us meat eaters: don’t buy chicken thighs on Styrofoam wrapped in plastic; buy the whole bird, and use the whole bird. Imagine the tasty goodness you can get out of a winter’s worth of home made chicken stock! (Mmm, Chopper’s got some on the stove right now…)

4. Make leftovers on purpose (and eat them!)

The title of this tip might also be “Plan ahead” but to be honest, we suck at planning ahead and I’d rather not preach something I don’t practice. What we are good at is making large batches of food that last several days. Chili works well, as do taco fixings, but Thai curry’s my favorite. I could eat it every day for a week. Now this might seem more of a frugal tip than a green tip, but here’s the thing: More leftovers = fewer food packages = less trash!

5. Compost

Not everyone’s got a yard, but if you do have the means to compost, then by all means, do it! I’ll admit, we’re not skilled in this department. Our “bin” is an old plastic garbage can with holes drilled in the sides and it’s nearly full. Building a new one – with worms this time! – is on our short list of yard projects. Bonus budget saver: No need to buy bags of fertilizer for spring planting!

6. Use cloth instead of paper

We haven’t bought paper napkins or even paper towels in months. Instead, we’ve got a stack of terry cloth towels, dish rags, and cloth napkins that, when used, just go into the regular laundry with our clothes. If they’re disgustingly dirty, they might need a pre-wash in the sink, but that’s rarely necessary. I haven’t added up the savings to our grocery bill yet, but the impact on our volume of kitchen trash is obvious.

7. Take a bag to the store

I don’t always remember, but I do my best to grab a cloth shopping bag before every trip to the market. On a good day, I might even make it home with a bag full of groceries and absolutely nothing inside that needs to head for the trash. Bonus budget saver: New Seasons knocks five cents off our bill when we bring our own bag. Hey, every little bit helps!

8. Conserve water

How much clean water goes down the drain while waiting for the tap to get hot? How about that extra water in the kettle after a cup of tea? No need to waste it when there’s a thirsty pooch nearby – just grab the Dog Water jug and fill ‘er up. Keeps the cats happy too. If you don’t have pets, water your plants!

So, how green is your kitchen?

My web savvy cats have informed me that today is OneWebDay. What’s OneWebDay? It’s a day for celebrating the web because, simply put, the web is worth celebrating. Here’s more from the OneWebDay site:

OneWebDay is one day a year when we all - everyone around the physical globe - can celebrate the Web and what it means to us as individuals, organizations, and communities.

As with Earth Day - an inspiration and model for OneWebDay - it’s up to the celebrants to decide how to celebrate. We encourage all celebrations! Collaboration, connection, creativity, freedom.

By the end of the day, the Web should be just a little bit better than it was before, and we’ll be able to see our connection to it more clearly.

Now, I might be off to a late start (almost 6pm, PST), but that’s not stopping me from joining in the festivities. For my small part I’ve made a list of things to accomplish before the day is out. Fortunately for me, my “day” doesn’t end till Chopper gets home from work at 10pm, so there’s time yet. Let’s see how well I do…

A final thought for OneWebDay: As most readers of Belly Timber know, Chopper and I spent all of 2005 and most of 2006 away from our home, caregiving for my parents. We were on an island, not unpopulated by any stretch, but separated from our friends by hours in the car and more hours on an expensive ferry ride. We didn’t get out much. Had it not been for the internet — for email, for chat, for this blog, and for our other online communities — we would have lost touch with nearly everyone save for those few who still rely on phones and snail mail. (Don’t get me wrong, I love a good old-fashioned letter on paper, but how many friends of mine still write them? Let me count. Um… Yup, none.) Point is, during our island stint, the web was our lifeline. It saved our sanity more than once, it brought us opportunities well worth having, and it gave us many many new friends. I only hope that some day we’ll be able to travel and meet the friends we’ve made who live further than a day’s drive away.

And now, because it is also Weekend Cat Blogging, and Puddy and Katie have declared an optional theme of “Favourite Things,” here is Ahriman doing one of his favourite things: Color-coordinated sleeping.

A few weeks back it was the orange Top Ramen box. Today, it’s manila envelopes. Ahri is also quite fond of the blond wood of my computer desk (which indeed matches his fur quite nicely). Trouble is, he can never quite decide where on that blond wood to plant his orange butt. In fact, I think his favourite thing might just be the act of strolling back and forth in front of my computer screen while I am trying to work. Hmmm. Here’s a question. If I paint the desk a color that clashes with his fur, will he finally stop this madness?

(Much more Weekend Cat Blogging over at A Byootaful Life, wherein all “favourites” get that extra-nifty extra “u.”)

Taggity tag:onewebday

The happiest recent news in Gastroblogia is that Owen of Tomatilla has revived Paper Chef after a six-month hiatus. Paper Chef was our introduction to the food blogging world, and it’s always been Chopper’s favorite event. He loves the excuse to play.

Now, the irony isn’t lost on us that Owen picked “home” for this month’s theme. Over the past months we’ve rarely ever had time to do much cooking at home. For a while this summer, Chopper was working six days a week with most of those days on shifts that lasted through the dinner hour. “Home” meant “where we crash at the end of a long day” and not much else.

This fall, things are finally looking up in that department, and — quite amazingly — this Paper Chef coincided with two days off wherein we weren’t booked solid with errands and social obligations. Of course those two days were yesterday and Monday so we still ran smack up against (and fell over) today’s deadline. So what else is new?

Given this rare opportunity to play, Chopper gave himself the challenge of creating three dishes: a canapé, a soup, and a main. We picked up a sampling of eggplants and chiles at our favorite Asian market, and for the fish — since smoked swordfish is unheard of in these parts (and I’m not a swordfish fan to begin with) — Chopper found a nice big slab of cod, coated it in spices and threw it on the smoker.

My (ongoing) challenge, in addition to my usual sous chef duties, is to put together a photo post of the day using my old, borrowed camera and Chopper’s computer, which lacks my usual photo editing software. Why that, you ask? Well, remember that computer that needed fixing? Ahhahahah, yup. It’s dead again. Soon as I’m done with this post, I’m constructing a shrine to Saint Isidore.

But first, photos…

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I’ve learned my lesson. Never say “hey, let’s test that new hard drive” in the middle of a project. Days later, and after much agony over ribbon cables and cooling fans, I’m back online. Fortunately, the cats did not interfere with the computer rebuilding process (this time.) Also fortunately, I was able to get quite a bit of writing done by hand, including a large portion of the following post, which I hope will cheer up those of us who are having a rough week.

Or, as I prefer to call it:

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